Newcastle suffer worst start to a top flight season for 19 years

The Magpies have just one point from their opening five Premier League games after a third consecutive defeat

Newcastle have equalled their worst ever start to a Premier League season after failing to win any of their opening five games.

The last time they started a top flight season so poorly was in 1999, which prompted the resignation of then-manager Ruud Gullit and led to the appointment of Sir Bobby Robson.

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That season didn’t end so badly though: Sir Bobby won his first game 8-0 against Sheffield Wednesday and guided the Magpies to 11th.

Saturday’s 2-1 defeat to Arsenal means Rafa Benitez’s men have lost all of their first three homes games, with their one solitary point coming away at Cardiff.

The Spanish boss, however, remained in a defiant mood despite such a desperate run of results.

Gullit resigned after enduring the same start in 1999

Asked if he was worried about a return of just one point from the first five games, he said: “No. I said before, it’s a difficult time because you have to win games, but it’s nothing that we were not expecting, we knew it could be like that.

“The only thing is that maybe against Cardiff, we could have got three points because we had the late penalty. But the reality is that against a top side, you can lose and we have lost by a small margin. That’s the only positive.

“You think that if you do well, you can get points against these teams.”

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